The present invention relates to a stabilizing device for supporting and fixing an elongated member being part of a machine. During operation this member is exposed to big loads but must be kept in an accurate position without vibrations in spite of the fact that only one end thereof is permanently fastened to the frame of the machine while the other end thereof must be readily accessible eg for placing an endless belt or the like around the elongated member.
In some types of wide belt sanding machines the sanding roller proper and usually also the idler roller are suspended from a horizontally protruding arm one end of which being fastened to the frame of the machine. This design is inevitable taking into account that it must be possible to place an endless sanding belt as a loop around the two rollers. During operation, in such a machine, there are created big loads mainly affecting the sanding roller proper. For this reason the mounting of the sanding roller to the arm and, of course also the mounting of the arm proper must be very rigid not to cause any adverse effect to the sanding. In a frequent size of machine of the type the horizontal arm usually has a length of at least one meter. This causes quite small loads to create big deformations of the arm if it is not very rigid and, furthermore, rigidly fastened to the frame of machine. In practice it has proved to be very difficult to design the arm and the mounting thereof in the frame with such a rigidity that the sanding can be performed without objections.